Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 23 January 1913, Klagenfurt

54. The Karmic Consequences of Laziness and Mendacity

During the last few months I have been occupied with occult research into the life of man between death and a new birth. The conscience ... Clarity about what conscience is comes from observing the soul through the shear between death and the new birth. The life of such souls casts shadows ahead to the future physical life. The events that will happen to us between death and a new birth become more and more apparent.

Preview into the future ...

Then comes a certain moment, approximately in the middle between death and a new birth. This has a shattering effect on the seer when he experiences it for the first time with a soul. - Kamaloka

Something happens immediately after the moment. We are as shaken before the point in time as we are before death in the physical world.

In the first half of life between death and a new birth we live more in mental images, in the second half we are more beings of will. When we are in the second half of this life, we can no longer change anything for the future physical life. The forces that arise in the second half of this life cause illness and death. The one who acts against his conscience, what will he do? All characteristics in physical life have an effect on the supersensible life. Whether or not epidemics will occur in the future depends on the moral impulses that people have now.

People are not bad, but comfortable. Out of convenience and habit [Giordano Bruno was burned and Galileo was sentenced to house arrest]. Today people have other means because they have become more cowardly. People are comfortable. They don't want to change, they don't want to rethink questions of mental and spiritual life. The spirits of the obstacles are multitudes who serve Ahriman. Ahriman mainly sets himself the task of installing resistance in life. Through our comfort we become servants of the spirits of obstacles. In the first half of life, between death and a new birth, the comfortable person sees in advance that he will become a servant of the spirits of obstacles and a brake on world development. This gives him thick juices in the next life. Braking is felt as pressure against oneself. Clumsiness in life stems from having been a complainer. We are in transition today. In the next life, the connections between the incarnations will be clearer. In the future, people will have a terrible feeling: Clumsiness comes from convenience.

A special chapter is the nature of lies. Untruthfulness plays a significant role in today's industrial and commercial life. This was not the case a short time ago. The essence of lying is as follows: What does a person want when he lies, consciously or unconsciously? Everyone who lies wants to use the lie to develop a power that spiritualizes him. The Elohim gave man earthly life so that he could accomplish his mission. Lucifer does not want people to go through life on earth. Lying is serving Lucifer: Tearing man away from earthly life into a spiritual realm, but into a Luciferian realm. Liars = swarmers; all this is Luciferian influence. If the human being has been a liar in his past earthly life, in the first half of life between death and a new birth one sees how he becomes a servant of the Luciferic hosts. People who have especially served the Luciferic hosts (who were liars) are those who become crass egoists. All egoism in later lives is prepared by lying in earlier lives. By putting himself out of the truth, man puts himself out of humanity. Karmically, egoism comes from lying. Speaking untruth about the higher worlds comes out of drunkenness from occultism.

Many of the souls sitting here were incarnated in ancient pastoral peoples. They looked up to the starry heavens and saw much more clearly than the physical planets - the surrounding spiritual entities, archangels and so on. It would have been impossible to deny the hierarchies at that time, as they were perceived. Today it is necessary to bring up ancient knowledge for people. Theosophy is a gradual reminding of mankind of an original knowledge. Our time calls the most evil spirits through their denial (of the spiritual).

People who have not yet discarded their old astral body in a new incarnation are then clairvoyants. However, they only see demonic figures that torment them incessantly.